Voter study 2004

Research Design

The interviews for Voter Study 2004 were not funded by a single organization, but by country-specific funding agencies. Yet the 2004 study was prepared by a group of principal investigators who also contributed to the organization of the previous EES studies.

The EES 2004 Voter Study is a sample survey of the electorates of 24 out of the 25 the member states of the European Union (it was not found possible to conduct a survey in Malta). Due to the lack of central funding not all surveys were conducted immediately after the European elections of and the sample size varied between countries. Data collection was done by telephone survey in nine countries (Austria, Britain, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Luxembourg, Portugal, Slovenia), mail surveys in four countries (Belgium , Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands) and f ace-to-face interviews in 11 countries (Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Northern Ireland, Poland, Slovakia, Spain, and Sweden). The total sample size is approximately 28,900 across 24 EU countries.

Every attempt was made for the questionnaires of this study to be identical across the various member states. However, as the field work was undertaken by 25 different research groups, discrepancies did arise. Despite this, the data file presented here provides the researcher with wide opportunities for comparative analyses across the European Union member states. A large number of questions were identical to those used in the 1989, 1994 and 1999 study, thus permitting over-time comparisons of voter behavior in the 1989, 1994, 1999 and 2004 elections.

The selection of topics and questions includes: electoral behavior including questions on party choices, past voting behavior, voting behavior at the national level, party preferences, and propensity to support particular parties; general political attitudes and behavior based on a question of interest in politics, campaign, most important problems, attitudes regarding EU, left-right self-placement, placement of parties; background characteristics including gender, age, education, religion, media consumption.